Have you considered optimizing stability. Strange things happen when someone gets disconnected, and then reconnects. I'm talking about loosing games, while waiting for opponent to move, his clock runs out and suddenly I get loss! Or after starting new game in blitz tournaments after few seconds me and my opponent get finished game with score 0:0, awesome, even though I didnt have any info about disconnect. Was a VIP here, some time ago, but now I prefer playchess server. And now those changes will cost you free users, as changes prefer VIPs. And still no info when an Android application will show up. It is really growing Android community out there, and it would be nice to play chesscube on tablet, like chess-com and playchess (not to mention FICS, ICC, and ChessOK application). Really worth thinking about.

I understand the desire to want to generate revenue from the site. However, I don't respond well when I feel like I'm being goaded into becoming a paying member through negative reinforcement, which is what the new release feels like. I suspect there are many others who will feel the same way. Positive encouragement, or a simple, visible request for more VIP members would have converted me. Hell, as much as I've played here I would even donate if asked. This update will probably send me back to FICS.